Threats to data privacy and identity theft are increasingly common, resulting in untold anguish, and hundreds of millions in losses yearly to those who have their personal or corporate information stolen and abused. But while online hacking, phishing and other computer aided theft of personal information makes newspaper headlines, masses of such information is still stolen the old fashioned way, by extracting information from printed personal communications which end in the trash, commonly known as dumpster diving.
The myriad of items passing through a typical mailbox, some solicited, others beyond the control of the individual, contain a wealth of information in public view, from names and addresses, to other more private information not designed for public disclosure. Further, information contained in medical mailings and prescription containers is highly confidential and open to abuse. Currently such items have no quick and simple way to assure that this information is destroyed, and the use of information purloined from discarded mailings and the like remains a huge problem to which the instant invention provides a solution.
In addition, data theft and espionage within industry are increasingly common. Even in an office with strict environmental controls such as a secured intranet and the absence of file save facilities on sensitive equipment, the necessity of hand-written notes and temporary memos remains a weak link in an otherwise secure system.
While numerous solutions exist to protect such private information, these most often require extraneous equipment, such as paper shredding, or may result in incomplete erasure of information, as is usually the case with simple paper ripping, use of concealment stamps and markers or the like. Lacking real world utility the currently available solutions fail to address a pressing need. The inventor herein discloses a destructive (eg. self-destructing or self-shredding) document, and provides a series of solutions to the theft of personal, medical and industrial information consequently providing a superior level of privacy and protection.